Quotes About Self

Look in the mirror and decide once and for all: Am I biological or mechanical? Is my deepest essence a machine or not?

Love can sometimes rise up like a desperate cry from a neglected part of oneself which takes a long view but which is submerged by the presence of strident wants.

In all your dreams and accomplishments in life, seek to become a best friend to these three people; the first is God, second is you, and third is your spouse.

Value your personal difference. If you try pleasing your friends, you'll lose your authentic self.

as if I were only a flower after all and not the map of the country in which it grows.

The room I entered was a dream of this room. Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine. The oval portrait of a dog was me at an early age. Something shimmers, something is hushed up. We had macaroni for lunch every day except Sunday, when a small quail was induced to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things? You are not even here.

There is in me, deep down, as there must be in everyone–at least, I hope there is, for I would not wish to be alone in this–a part that does not care for anything other than itself. I could lose everything and everyone and that pilot light would still be burning at my centre, that steady flame that nothing will quench, until the final quenching.

Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much more than a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.

This is the mortal world. It is a world where nothing is lost, where all is accounted for while yet the mystery of things is preserved; a world where they may live, however briefly, however tenuously, in the failing evening of the self, solitary and at the same time together somehow here in this place, dying as they may be and yet fixed forever in a luminous, unending instant.

Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self. And incredulity, that too was a large part of being happy, I mean that euphoric inability fully to believe one's simple luck.

Siempre fui un nadie bien definido cuya mayor ansia fue ser un alguien indefinido.

I have achieved nothing, nothing. I am what I always was, alone as always, locked in the same old glass prison of myself.

The story of your life is not your life. It is your story.

One way or another, no matter which theory of our journey is correct, it's myself I address; to whom I rehearse as to a stranger our history and condition, and will disclose my secret hope though I sink for it.

In the love of my parents that's so conditional, in my love of nature that's so ephemeral, in the love of a girlfriend that so far is either short-lived or unavailable? In all these thoughts I forget to question my love for myself. Squeezing out sponges of freezing water to rinse shampoo off car bodies, that's the one thing I seem to be lacking.

You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you're pretending to be.

Dracula would have felt less fear examining his own reflection.

The disowned part of self is an energy - an emotion or desire or need, that has been shamed every time it emerged. These energy patterns are repressed but not destroyed. They are alive in our unconscious.

To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low-grade chronic depression. This has to do with the sadness of losing one's authentic self. Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self.

I could not heal my being with my doing. To be who I am is all that matters.

if you were never allowed to express anger in your family, your anger becomes an alienated part of yourself. You experience toxic shame when you feel angry. This part of you must be disowned or severed. There is no way to get rid of your emotional power of anger. Anger is self-preserving and self-protecting energy. Without this energy you become a doormat and a people-pleaser. As your feelings, needs and drives are bound by toxic shame, more and more of you is alienated.

The unlimited power that many modern gurus offer is false hope. Their programs calling us to unlimited power have made them rich, not us. They touch our false selves and tap our toxic shame. We humans are finite, "perfectly imperfect." Limitation is our essential nature. Grave problems result from refusing to accept our limits.

It is impossible to be intimate if you have no sense of self. How can you share yourself with another if you do not really know who you are? How can anyone know you if you do not know who you really are? One way a person builds a strong sense of self is by developing strong boundaries

Codependency is a condition wherein one has no inner life. Happiness is on the outside.